The Screen Music Awards are set to return to Melbourne for the first time since since 2015.

Set to celebrate the unseen champions of music composition in film and television, the 2017 Screen Music Awards will take place on Monday November 13 at the Melbourne Recital Centre.

Taking the baton from The Chaser’s Chris Taylor and Andrew Hansen who hosted last year’s event in Sydney, will be comedian, writer, actor and author Denise Scott. Denise has appeared on high-rating TV shows House Husbands and Winners and Losers, and most recently was tapped as the voice of Channel 9’s Travel Guides. 

“I am just thrilled to be hosting this year’s Screen Music Awards, in the fair city of Melbourne no less! These musicians write music for screen stories and I love a good story. It should be a great night, full of laughs,” said Denise Scott.

Award winning screen composer Ashley Irwin has passed his baton on to first-time Screen Music Awards Music Director Jessica Wells. As a composer across the classical, commercial and film music worlds, Wells  and she has worked for some of Australia’s best composers. Her most recent role was as composer of the orchestral recordings of film soundtracks for Nigel Westlake’s Paper Planes and Jeffrey Walker’s just released Ali’s Wedding.

As in the past, this year’s Awards will see the Music Director lead a live orchestra as they take nominated selections from the screen and bring them into the concert hall for a special performance.

Guy Gross, President of the AGSC said: 

“Whilst we composers often feel we toil alone in our music making, there are always other craftspeople not far off screen.  From technicians to educators, from conductors to scriptwriters… it’s patently obvious we’re a melodic cog in a larger story telling machine. We look forward to honouring those who have contributed to the industry and enabled us to do that voodoo that we do.”

2017 SCREEN MUSIC AWARDS CATEGORIES

• Most Performed Screen Composer – Australia*
• Most Performed Screen Composer – Overseas*
• Best Music for a Documentary
• Best Music for a Short Film
• Best Original Song Composed for the Screen
• Best Music for a Mini-Series or Telemovie
• Best Music for a Television Series or Serial
• Best Television Theme
• Best Music for Children’s Television
• Best Feature Film Score
• Best Music for an Advertisement
• Best Soundtrack Album
• Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen Award (as determined by APRA AMCOS Board of Directors)

*Determined by statistical analysis

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.